Description: (Applicant's Description) The Informatics Shared Resource develops, deploys and evaluates a shared set of communications utilities and information resources that facilitate and empower the scientific, administrative, and outreach missions of UCSD Cancer Center to make research discoveries. It also functions as a source of technical support, consultation in the design of new information resources, and a research and development focus for valuable innovations in information technology applied to cancer research and clinical oncology. The common organizing principle for the creation of new shared resource and the evolution of existing ones will be a Cancer Center Intranet and an Internet-based Virtual Private Network that projects secure services to UCSD Cancer Center Members, community affiliates and other research centers in a distance-independent fashion. The primary theme is to promote and support all basic and applied cancer research at UCSD Cancer Center, with a sp ecial emphasis on applications to facilitate clinical research, within UCSD's healthcare facilities and at community sites. Simply stated, the aim is to create a set of network-based, patient and provider-specific information services that makes it easier for a faculty or affiliated community physician to enroll, study and treat a patient on a research protocol than to treat that same patient off protocol. We believe that incremental progress toward this goal is measurable, and construct our new information services in a fashion that supports prospective comparison of standard and digital-network-facilitated clinical research. The Informatics Shared Resource strives to generate publishable evaluations of its services, and thus combine operational support of the Center with high quality research and development in the field of cancer informatics. This resource is also designed with the specific intention that it should be an efficient vehicle for this Cancer Center to serve its sur rounding community in the areas of cancer outreach, public education and cancer information.